This edited article about prophets originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 650 published on 29 June 1974.

Hans Bohm, the shepherd, spoke of his Marian vision and the coming end of the world

At the first beat of a drum, the noise in the tavern died away. There was silence as the musicians began playing a lilting air. The crowd recognised it at once; they were all shepherd-folk and had whistled or hummed it to their sheep on the hillsides. Soon they were joining in, beating time on the tables with their mugs. They recognised the musician, too. He was a shepherd who came down from the hills each evening to play for a few pence in the tavern of the village of Niklashausen. His name was Hans Bohm. Soon he was to be called the saviour of mankind and the herald of the end of the world.

It was in 1474. Europe had been ravaged by wars, dynastic and religious, and the people were exhausted. They often sought release in fantasies. A recurrent belief was that so much war and devastation must have a purpose: must herald the Millenium, the destruction of the old, corrupt world and the creation of a new. In remote cells, men pored over parchments to discover when the event might happen. Two Bohemians argued that 1467 would be the year; but when it passed without incident, no one’s faith was in any way diminished – it was simply assumed that they had got their sums wrong.

In the states of Germany, the feeling that the end of the world was approaching was especially strong. The people there had been heavily taxed to pay for their emperor’s armies and the armies themselves had carried off what the tax-gatherers had left. In no state was the atmosphere more apprehensive than in Wurzburg, which was governed by a powerful Prince-Bishop. And it was to his castle that rumours came of strange events in the village of Niklashausen. People spoke of a young shepherd who played the drum, who had declared that the world was to be destroyed and – here the Prince-Bishop choked in fury – who was laying the blame for it all on princes and bishops.

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The best pictures of the anti-Catholic riots of 1780 known as the Gordon Riots show the army shooting looters and the mob setting buildings alight. The first picture of the Gordon Riots depicts the army shooting a group of looters.

The army takes aim and fires at the looters during the Gordon Riots, by C L Doughty

The second picture of the Gordon Riots shows the mob setting the King’s Bench Prison on fire in St George’s Fields.

The mob destroying and setting fire to the King’s Bench Prison and House of Correction in St George’s Fields

The third picture of the Gordon Riots shows Lord George Gordon addressing the mob in St George’s Fields.

Lord George Gordon addressing the mob in St George’s Fields

Many more pictures relating to the Gordon Riots can be found at the Look and Learn picture library.